Customer Reviews

Family Guy: Volume Three (Seasons 4-5 Part 1)

5 star:		(94)
4 star:		(35)
3 star:		(22)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

Family Guy Vol. 3 is the funniest Family Guy set out. It includes my favorite episode Petarded. This set will contain 3 discs (like Vol. 2 did), all 13 episodes of season 4, and extras. Here is the list of the episodes in Vol. 3:

Disc 1
1. North by North Quahog
2. Fast Times at Buddy Cianic Jr. High
3. Blind Ambition
4. Don't Make Me Over

Disc 2
1. The Cleveland-Loretta Quagmire
2. Petarded
3. Brian The Bachelor
4. 8 Simple Rules for Buying My Daughter

Disc 3
1. Breaking Out is Hard To Do
2. Model Misbehavior
3. Perfect Castaways
4. Peter's Got Woods
5. Jungle Love
6. Extras

Extras Include:
1. Commentary Tracks
2. Behind The Scenes With Stewie
3. Resurrection of Family Guy
4. Deleted Scenes
5. Animatics
6. Family Guy "Live In Las Vegas" Music Video

This set is a must-have for any Family Guy fan.

North by North Quahog"
Original Airdate: 05-01-05

Lois & Peter try to spice up their sex life by taking a second honeymoon and end up fighting Mel Gibson to stop the release of Passion of the Christ 2. Meanwhile, Brian and Stewie are charged with watching the kids while they are gone and slip into the role of 'mom and dad'.

"Fast Times at Buddy Cianci Jr. High"
Original Airdate: 05-08-05

Chris falls in love with his new substitute teacher whose looking for a boy to kill her husband. Brian takes up substitute teaching for the Remedial English class filled with hoods.

"Don't Make Me Over"
Original Airdate: 06-06-05

When Meg is turned down by a cute boy, she is devasted until Lois takes her to the mall for a makeover. Peter and the neighborhood guys decide to form a garage rock band and when catastrophy happens at their first performance, the whole Griffin family kicks in to help. A talent scout turns them into a family bus touring band.

"Blind Ambition"
Original Airdate: 05-15-05

While trying to set a world record for eating money, Peter succumbs to nickel poisoning that strikes him blind. Quagmire tries to shake off his addiction to women. God comes to earth to be a player. Lois decides to use Peter's blindness to try out a new au naturale look.

"The Cleveland-Loretta Quagmire"
Original Airdate: 06-12-05

Peter and Brian walk in on Loretta and Quagmire getting giggity and Cleveland becomes obsessed with getting revenge. Loretta kicks Cleveland out for not caring anough and he moves in with the Griffins. Quagmire goes into hiding while Cleveland trains and plans his revenge.

"Petarded"
Original Airdate: 06-19-05

After winning at Trivial Pursuit, Peter claims to be a genius, so Brian asks him to take an IQ test to prove it. When it turns out Peter is borderline retarded, he learns to use his handicap to his advantage.

"Brian the Bachelor"
Original Airdate: 06-26-05

Brian is selected to be featured on THE BACHELOR despite his belief that reality TV is all fake. Chris gets a talking pimple that convinces him to do mischeivious things, and Peter and the gang help Cleveland get back into dating.

"8 Simple Rules for Buying My Teenage Daughter"
Original Airdate: 07-10-05

Meg is jealous over Neil Goldman's new lady love and decides she wants him instead. Peter runs up a huge bill at Mort's Pharmacy. Stewie falls in love with his new babysitter and decides to rub out her boyfriend so he can have her to himself.

"Breaking Out Is Hard to Do"
Original Airdate: 07-17-05
Lois's kleptomania lands her in jail, leaving the Griffin household in a worse state of dissarray than usual. Peter takes up sumo wrestling.

"Model Misbehavior"
Original Airdate: 07-24-05

Lois decides to fulfill her lifelong dream of becoming a model while Peter deals with the fact that every man in town wants to bed his wife. Meanwhile, Brian gets worms and Stewie involves him in a pyramid scam to pay off the vet bills

"Perfect Castaway"
unaired as of this review

"Peter's Got Woods"
unaired as of this review

"Jungle Air"
unaired as of this review

The three part Stewie saga will only be available on the Direct to DVD release. Uncensored I might add, WOOO HOOO.

The special features anounced for this box set are,
Commentary tracks (episodes and participants aren't known at this time)
Behind the Scenes with Stewie
Resurrection of Family Guy
Deleted scenes
Animatics
Family Guy "Live In Las Vegas" Music Video
And more!


This should be a great box set when it's released in November. Many great episodes from the first season of Family Guy since it was resurected on FOX after steller DVD sells and great ratings on Adult Swim. Any fans of animation or just great comedy should pick this one up when it comes out. Should make a great Christmas present.

Make no mistake, Family Guy Volume well below the standard set by Volumes 1 and 2, but it is still very good. With the exception of a few episodes (most notably, 'Don't Make Me Over'), Family Guy still retains the same off the wall humor that was prevalent in previous seasons, and thankfully, much less singing.

The worst aspect about Family Guy Vol. 3 is that it only contains the first 13 episodes of Family Guy. Fox, not content with milking Family Guy with 'The Freakin' Sweet Collection', have split the 4th production season into three DVD titles: 'Family Guy Vol. 3', 'Family Guy Vol. 4', and 'Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story' Vol. 3 is half the running time of Vol. 1, and of course, not half the price.

This allows Fox to push out the third volume before Christmas rather than wait until all of season 4 has aired. The second half of Season 4 is notably funnier and comparable to previous seasons in terms of quality...but does not appear on this disc.

The drop in quality and the lack of actual episodes on this volume may leave a sour taste in your mouth.

First off, I must say how thrilled i am that family guy is back. It has long been my favorite, and these new episodes are nice to see. However, it seems that at least in this season, the creators had to fall back on a number of laugh strategys that aren't really funny. For example, the repeater: where a charecter repeats himself over and over and over. or the progressor: ex, where Stewie reiterates his point about Brian's novel for 30 seconds. These things are not that funny!!! Also, Stewie is no longer an evil baby genius bent on world domination or matricide. There was a not a single attempt on Lois' life during a single episode. BRING BACK THE OLD STEWIE. I can't be too hard on this show, as i trully do love it, but it seems that the writers need some new joke ideas, and need to return to the old stewie charecter.

*NOTE: THE 1-STAR RATING APPLIES TO THE DVD ITSELF, NOT THE SHOW*

I'm a Family Guy fanatic. Best animated show on TV, by far. I pre-ordered this thing a long time ago. I can't get enough!

But this is just evil, man!

I put in the first disc from the set, and oh, what's this? An advertisement. Oh, hey, look, another advertisement! How sweet. Hey, thanks, guys! No worries, just press the menu button and skip the ads, right? Wrong. It's blocked. You have no choice but to watch the ads every time you start the DVD.

Luckily, my DVD player has a recall feature that gives you the option of returning to your old place if you stop and then restart. However, if it's on the menu screen when you turn it off, then it goes back to the beginning. Which means that, every time I turn off the DVD, I have to make sure that it's actually playing an episode when I hit the power button. Otherwise, I have to watch their two stupid commercials.

This really irks me. When I rent a dvd from Blockbuster or Netflix, I kinda expect to have to sit through some ads (it still irks me, though), but when I pay upwards of $30 for a DVD, I believe that it is reasonable to expect that, at the very least, I should have control over the pre-menu ads. The fact that I am locked into watching them each and every time I start up a disc shows what can only be described as complete disrespect for the consumer. Bloody hell, people, I already own the Family Guy movie---I don't need it hawked to me every time I want to watch Vol. 3!

Like I said, great show, and great season (the Pinocchio/Gipetto scene is already legendary), but getting screwed on the DVD technology like this is just...poor judgment on Fox's part. We consumers deserve better than this!

It wasn't that long ago that Seth MacFarlane's Family Guy suffered an untimely death thanks to the brilliant collective minds at Fox, dooming the series to late night re-runs on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block. However, the re-runs managed to get higher ratings then the syndicated episodes, and the DVD sales were surprisingly through the roof. Thus, the voices of the people were heard by the mighty network, and Family Guy was miraculously resurrected and back on Fox. The series gets off to a slamming start (including Peter's opening rant where he names every single show to air on Fox that suffered an untimely death as well) as Peter and Lois seek to spice up their relationship, and end up stealing the master copy of Mel Gibson's upcoming "Passion of the Christ 2". Later on, Peter gets judged to be mentally incompetant, and there's plenty of other gags, in-jokes, and absurd references that only a handful of people will get. It's true, this fourth season isn't the same quality as the previous three (Stewie is more of a wisecracking character than the evil baby genius hellbent on controling the world here, and his interaction with pet dog Brian isn't what it used to be) but it's still complete animated lunacy that is irreverant as ever, and hilarious as ever. The voice team, including MacFarlane, MAD TV alum Alex Borstein, Seth Green, and That 70's Show's Mila Kunis, do great deadpan work. All in all, it's great to have Family Guy back, and the prayers of longtime fans yearning for the show to return have thankfully been answered. Let's hope that this time around, Fox has learned a lesson, and won't shuffle the show around the schedule to the brink of cancellation like they did before.

Let me preface this opinion--opinion, because not many of the reviews on Amazon are actually reviews--by saying that Family Guy is probably my favorite animated television series ever. I really am a die-hard fan. I wrote a few letters to the CEO of FOX Broadcasting. I was in there begging for more seasons. I was on cloud nine when we got them.

This season has been good. Really, it has. I don't think many would argue that it was Family Guy's best, but it still remains better than 99% of everything else on TV. It's the typical nonlinear, almost psychotically random humor that has made the show a classic. But I've got my complaints, which are listed below. Which is why I gave it 4 stars and not the 5 I've given the other volumes. Rate me down if you're so fickle that you cannot stand a reviewer who doesn't give everything Family Guy 5 stars. I'm just being honest.

The first few episodes are really obviously bleeding over from American Dad. Go through your Family Guy DVD collection, and you'll find plenty of political jokes--but they're just off things. The first few episodes of this season come off really bitter and anti-Republican. It cools off and returns to good natured poking-fun-at-everyone later on, but it made me roll my eyes enough for me to list it here.

As reviewers have stated, its shifts are somewhat overused and formulaic. There were a lot of "remember the time I..." jokes in old episodes, and they are BRILLIANT. Even most of this season's were brilliant. But it seems like they're squeezing way too many into each episode and not relying on normal jokes to carry a part of the weight. The episodes suffer.

It seems like Seth is struggling to catch back up with every other show that has been running since Family Guy was canceled. Mel Gibson jokes? Honestly? South Park; The Daily Show; Arrested Development; even Conan O'Brien--it has been done, and better.

In passing, now that I think about it, the first few episodes of the season are also very Stewie/Quagmire/Joe/Cleveland-devoid. But as I've stated above, I believe this is Family Guy in transition; you can see toward the end of the season that Seth is catching steam and finding his rhythm. It gets better as it goes on.

I'm not saying don't buy the DVD. For God's sake, buy it. The show is still awesome. But it isn't perfect. I'd look for perfect, if it's going to happen again, to hit you with the season that just began and ones that possibly follow. The first episode of it was great, and I only see it getting better.

these are all the dvd episodes-
North by North Quahog
Fast Times at Buddy Cainci Jr. High
Pretarted
Jungle Love
Model Misbehavior
8 Simple Rules For Buying My Teenage Daughter
The Cleveland - Loretta Quagmaire
Breaking Out is Hard To Do
Blind Ambition
Peters Got Woods
Brian the Bachelor
Perfect Castaway

Also,the 3-part Stewie saga is NOT on this dvd.BOO HOO!!

Bye,Arrion

its funny but i refuse to buy a season thats split into 2 just to make more money. ppl shouldn't pay for ripoff. 1 full season yea its worth buying, 60$ on both parts of 1 season umm no

I say this, because the fourth season is not the best season of Family Guy.

When I heard they were bringing the show back in 2005, I got up and sang the Happy Happy Joy Joy song, for that Family Guy was one of the funniest cartoons I have seen. But after seeing the season premiere, I was left somewhat dissapointed. In fact, by looking at a most episodes, it actually feels as if to say nobody has a clue what they are doing.

The first three seasons were top-notch hilarious stories with edgy humor and solid concepts. The plotlines in the fourth season, however, were pretty damn stale. Fox may have been pressurizing Seth Macfarlane and his crew around, but that led the episodes to great stories and edgy situations that are not so hard to laugh at. Now with Fox letting them do whatever they please, everything becomes lazy. Episodes like "Fast Times at Buddy Cianci Jr. High" and "Petarded" would start off very nicely and come home with underdeveloped endings. Or even if they are not being lazy, they don't concentrate on the plots, rather, they concentrate on the humor itself--involving favorite catchphrases, inside-jokes, and trademark edginess, thinking those were the only elements that made the show successful, but really the chemistry of the show also included good concept, character development, and the evolution of the show.

I included the evolution part, because when it comes to humor, they are digging up a few cliches here and there. (Remember Peter and the Chicken fight in DABOOM? It's back in "Blind Ambition".) Or at times when it's not cliched, it's edgy. The fourth season provided a hell of a lot of edgy humor that isn't so easy to laugh; In fact it's TOO edgy to be funny, and when it's too edgy, it's disturbing. I, for one, did not like the premiere episode "North By North Quahog", because the concept of Catholic Mel Gibson making a Rush Hour-esque sequel to "The Passion of the Christ" made the entire episode a mind-numbingly tedious exercise to watch. Or even when it's not cliched, or edgy, it's just plain lazy, stupid, and crude without even being funny, and that's included in a number of episodes such as "Model Misbehavior" (The Marijuana guy running around in the drug store is not funny at all.)

The character development, too, is not the best thing out there. Peter's just a one-dimensional idiot so I won't worry about him, but characters like Stewie are not what they used to be; Stewie used to be an insane little boy that always causes mischief whereever he goes, but you barely see him actually cause any mischief in this season. Cleveland and his wife break up thier relationship and plan to divorce in "The Cleveland-Loretta Quaqmire", when you don't see them do much in the previous seasons of the show. Those are just a few examples of what I mean; you'll find out the rest on your own.

On the upside, though, it's not that bad; it's still a little bit better entertainment than some animation that makes it through TV these days. The three stars are for the few gems in this set, which include "Breaking out is Hard to Do" and "Brian the Bachelor". With those episodes, I do believe they can still turn around in the fifth season, even with creator Seth Macfarlane leaving AMERICAN DAD to concentrate on this show.

Oh man, I hope...I hope...